


Winter In My Heart

by BarbaraKaterina



Series: 2020 Holiday Fics [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: And Sansa Stark is ready, Gen, Introspection, Winter, winter has come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27910837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarbaraKaterina/pseuds/BarbaraKaterina
Summary: Sansa watches the white raven, and thinks of winter.Just a little introspective piece for Advent.
Series: 2020 Holiday Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043775
Kudos: 2





	Winter In My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> My first Advent fic of this year. As always, I'm doing it "four fandoms I wrote for this year"-style, so you get ASoIaF first, and only a liiittle late. I'm sure it's still Saturday somewhere in the world.

Sansa gave the white raven in the maester‘s solar a long, measuring look.

So winter had finally come.

There was something strange about seeing an event you have been told would happen for all your life.

There was also nothing that made her feel more like a Stark, more like _Sansa_ again, than seeing this proof that her family had, once again, been right.

The last winter had ended when she was barely a year old, and she had no memories of it, except being told by Old Nan that she was a child of winter, always compared to Bran, the eternal summer child. Old Nan had names like this for all of them: Robb was the child of war, Arya the child of spring, she and her brother had winter and summer, and Rickon had been called a child of old years, even though her parents had hardly been old when he’d been born and Rickon wasn’t that much younger than Bran anyway. Old Nan had her idiosyncrasies, and no one cared to argue with her.

Sansa missed her more than she would have missed a limb.

She missed them all, so much that for a moment she was bowled over with it, though she allowed no tears to fall.

She was far beyond tears.

She straightened after a moment, checked that no one had seen her – it would be easily explained as a worry about the upcoming winter, of course, to anyone but Littlefinger, who would take one look at the raven and no doubt know exactly what her thoughts had been.

But there was no one present in the room, and so Sansa stepped closer tot he white bird.

She wondered if the names Old Nan had bestowed on them meant something. Robb had lost his life in a war, after all. Would she die of winter, then, freeze or starve to death? She was no particularly disturbed by the idea, though there would be something ironic about a Stark of Winterfell perishing of cold in the south. But if this winter was going to be as cold as everyone said…

Still, Sansa could not believe her fate was simply to wither away in the frost. She had survived tehe poison of King’s Landing, and she stayed alive at Littlefinger’s side. Surely, cold, of all things would not finish her, or not easily at least?

Robb, she remembered, had not died easily in the war. He led their armies from victory to victory, and in the end it was only by Lannister and Frey treachery that he fell. As a child of war, he had been good, brilliant at it, smashing more experienced commanders before him like they were nothing.

Sansa stepped even closer to the white raven, and dared to extend a finger to run it down its head. The raven gave her a curious look, but allowed her to do as she wished.

Would she, too, excel at winter, she wondered?

She was less bothered by the cold than most here, she already knew, except for the servants that came down from the Eyrie, who were used to such things. She was in less danger of catching ill, of getting frostbitten, for she knew how to deal with the cold. He loved the snow, in spite of the bitter memory of that day in the Eyrie courtyard that led to her near death.

All of these things were good, would be useful, but they would not guarantee her survival.

She kept petting the raven, and as she did, she thought of Littlefinger’s plans for her, of the marriage to Harold Hardyng, of his hope that she would deliver him the Vale. She had been born in winter, and she would marry in winter as well.

Perhaps that had been Littlefinger’s mistake.

Sansa had once been promised to marry Joffrey. She could handle Harold Hardyng, and she could take the marriage, blessed by the Seven but in the season that belonged to the North, to the Starks, to her, and she could turn it around to be hers, too, not Littlefinger’s.

She could take the Vale to be hers.

She could take the North to be hers.

She looked down at the raven, her hand sliding down all the way to its tail feathers.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for leading me back to myself.”

She looked out at the falling snow, and she planned, and she dreamed.

The winter had come, and with it, Sansa Stark had returned.


End file.
